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I’m assuming that you now have a DSR (see [Point Of Sale Data - Basic Analytics] ) so you can manipulate the large quantities of data
necessary to do this work, you have your routine reports automated and use the
DSR for ad-hoc queries against the POS data.

The DSR provides a great foundation for analytic work: use
it to integrate multiple data sources, clean the data, handle very large data volumes as though it was
all sat on your desktop and it will help you build reports that summarize that
history with ease. Typically, the DSR does not provide much help for you with
predictive-analytics.

Let’s look at an example related to what really drives
sales. Do you know?
Can you quantify it? Knowing
these answers with quantified detail can help you better explain your sales
history and plan for the future. Better
promotions, better pricing, supply chains that anticipate peaks in demand and
make sure the product is on the shelf when it’s needed. Here are some of the things that could drive
your sales:

If
you are fairly sure that just one thing drives the majority of your sales you
can get a decent estimation of its impact visually with charts and tables. Here’s an example:

In the USA, money for the government
assistance program, SNAP (previously known as Food Stamps) is given out on
specific days of the month. Some States
even make the entire month’s allowance available on just one day every
month. If your product is heavily
impacted by the availability of SNAP dollars and you plot average sales by day
of the month for a State you can clearly see the impact that this has on these
days and the residual effects 2-3 days later.

If
your sales are driven by multiple drivers, trying to tease apart the impact of
each is going to need more complex analysis but in many, many cases, it can be
done, either by moving the data across to external analytic routines or by
embedding predictive-analytics directly into your DSR.

Predictive Analytics like this may seem overly complex and will probably drive just a few
percentage points of incremental sales.
But then, what’s 1% of incremental sales worth to you? Enough to cope with a little complexity?